Showcase · Business handover
The buyers loved the business. They could not see how it ran.
A 60-person metal fab shop under negotiation. Binders from 2019, spreadsheets one person could run, and a foreman who knew everything. We interviewed 22 people, wrote the whole operation down, and handed the buyers one package. Due diligence closed the same week.
Due diligence stalled in May. The books were clean. The operation was in people’s heads.
Binders from 2019. Spreadsheets one person could run. A foreman who knew everything.
The client
A 60-person metal fab shop, and the buyers who wanted it.
The product was good. The books were clean. What the buyers could not see was how the place ran, and whether it would keep running if a key person left in the transition. That question stalls a lot of sales. It happens four ways.
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Selling.
The listing has been up nine months. Buyers cannot see past the owner, so the deal stalls in due diligence.
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A new owner.
The deal has closed. Week one, the new owner asks what paint we buy, who runs receiving, and where the safety program is. Nobody knows all three.
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A new manager.
The general manager retired or moved on. The next one is good, but the place ran on what the last one carried in their head.
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Key staff leaving.
The foreman is sixty-three. The shipper has been there since the building went up. Nobody has written down what they do, and there are two years left to get it.
The problem, in their words
“We love the product. We cannot tell if it survives Dale leaving.”
- We have procedures. They are in a binder from 2019. Nobody has opened it since the audit.
- Only Dale knows why we refuse that customer’s work. Only Dale knows what to do when the plate comes in light. Dale retires in March.
- Everybody knows where the brake shims are. (Nobody did. One person did.)
- The one supplier that matters is a friendship. The account is in the old owner’s name and the terms were agreed at a hockey game.
So we interviewed the people, not the binder.
Twenty-two key people, on the floor, with a tool that transcribes as they talk. Their job, their role, their equipment, their ideas, and every “everybody knows”. Then we went back with the follow-ups. Everything into one database, organized by department, and every fact tagged to the record it became.
How it goes
Ten weeks. From a stalled deal to a signed one.
Nothing for the staff to prepare. Two of us in the building with the recording kit, then the build.
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01
Interview everyone who matters.
Twenty-two people in a week, transcribed as they talk. The job, the role, the equipment, the ideas, the odd things.
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02
Go back with the follow-ups.
The gaps, the “everybody knows” items chased to a shelf and a name, the eleven “always done it that way” asked why.
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03
One database, by department.
Every fact tagged to what it became. Then every department categorized: flows, responsibilities, job descriptions, procedures.
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04
Safety, quality, maintenance.
Safe work practices and the safety program rewritten. The quality system to ISO 9001. Every machine off the plate into a maintenance program.
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05
The legacy library, then read back.
Every old binder, notebook and spreadsheet scanned and linked to what replaced it. Every procedure read to the person who does it, and signed.
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06
Hand it over.
One dashboard, twelve parts, to the buyers. Due diligence closed the same week. The sale completed two weeks later.
The result
The deal closed. The new owners walked in with the book open.
Twenty-two interviews, 21 hours, 239 documents, 228 signed by the person who does the job. Twenty-four things everybody knew, chased down. Every machine on a program, every ISO clause on a document, 6,300 pages of the old world scanned and linked. When Dale retires in March, the shop keeps the method. The package above is the real thing.
Some owners take the record and stop there, because written down was all they needed. Some carry straight on into a build, and the record becomes the plan. That build is the rest of what PragmaBuild does.
- 22people interviewed, 21 hours
- 239documents, 228 signed by the person who does the job
- 24things everybody knew, chased down
- 10weeks from a stalled deal to a signed one
What this is not.
A ten person shop and a hundred person plant do not get the same package. Every job is quoted on its own, in writing, after we have seen the floor.
You built it and it runs on you. Get it out of your head and onto something a person can read.
Start with a walkthrough.
We come and look at the operation. Then we tell you in writing what writing it down would take and what it would cover.
Book a walkthrough Open the live book
Free. Thirty minutes. You keep the map.